Photos by Oren Ziv / Activestills.org Four years after the 2011 social protest movement brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets, the tents are back on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard. Approximately 200 people re-established the tent protest Sunday evening, in a demonstration against the high cost of living and housing in Israel. Shay Cohen, who organized the protest, told +972 Magazine: "I have a baby at home, but we need to go to the streets — otherwise nothing will change. I call on everyone who is sitting at home to join us. I am 40 years old and…

Photos and text by Ahmad Al-Bazz At the height of a harsh winter season, the Israel Electric Company cut power to two major Palestinian cities in the West Bank twice over this past week. Nearly 650,000 people were left without power for an entire hour in the middle of the day in Jenin, Nablus and 18 villages in the area. The decision comes as a response the Palestinian Authority's unpaid debt to the company, which totals some 1.9 billion shekels ($483 million). However, the Palestinian electricity company in the north of the West Bank claims that the numbers Israel provided are…

Settlers built a Star of David made out of rocks on private Palestinian lands in the village of Shweika in the South Hebron Hills on Saturday. The settlers, who live in the illegal outpost Eshtamoa near the village, built the Star of David in order to obstruct Palestinian residents' sheep from grazing, and as a crude way of marking territory. The army prohibits Israelis from entering the valley below the outpost since it is recognized as private Palestinian land. Therefore, the fact that they were able to build this giant Star of David indicates that the IDF is clearly not enforcing…

Text by Haggai Matar Photos by Yotam Ronen, Shiraz Grinbaum, Miki Kratsman / Activestills.org Nearly 1,000 protesters — Palestinians, Israelis and internationals — marched to celebrate 10 years of popular struggle in the West Bank village Bil'in. Soldiers responded with tear gas, pepper spray and arrests. One Palestinian was badly wounded. Meanwhile, activists marked 21 years since the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, and called to open Shuhada Street to Palestinians. Approximately 1,000 protesters, most of them Palestinian, 100 Israelis and dozens of international activists took part in a large protest in Bil'in on Friday, marking ten years of popular…

The best way to object to Netanyahu, his Congress speech and his policies, is to ignore him. Since the Netanyahu Congress speech episode began last month, the press, and specifically foreign press, has been flooded with items on the Israeli prime minister. Not a day has gone by without a headline about Netanyahu's lavish spending, incompetence regarding the housing crisis, his assault on media and academics, and of course his incitement against centrist political rivals. Netanyahu has redefined the phrase, "bad publicity is good publicity," since none of this appears to be hurting Netanyahu in the least at home. As Gershom…

Bil'in protest leader Abdullah Abu-Rahme: If Israelis must decide between Labor and Likud, they might as well just vote for Liberman instead. The residents of the West Bank village Bil'in are in close contact with the Israeli state. For the past ten years, they have been waging a popular struggle against the separation barrier that has cut them off from most of their land, while withstanding heavy oppression from the army, including arrests, tear gas, raids on the village, and more. As non-Jewish subjects of military rule in the occupied territories, the residents of Bil'in have no right to vote…

For the first time, American Jews are getting the feeling that they might have to choose between Israel, and their loyalty to the country in which they were born and have become successful to a degree almost unprecedented in the history of the Jewish people. In remarks that shook American Jewish leaders with their bluntness, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said on Tuesday that Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to address Congress on March 3 was "destructive of the fabric of the relationship" between the United States and Israel. Rice was speaking to Charlie Rose on his PBS news magazine show Tuesday…

What do you do when facing backlash from all sides of the political spectrum? Blame it on the Ayatollah. A much-anticipated housing report published Wednesday evening by State Comptroller Yosef Shapira blamed the Netanyahu government for failing to properly deal with the rising costs of housing in Israel. According to Shapira, poor government planning and disregard for the middle class played key roles in creating the current severe housing crisis in Israel, which could lead to the disappearance of the middle class and eventually have a devastating impact on the entire economy, he says. Netanyahu's failure, says the report, mainly…

Activestills photographers have been documenting the popular struggle protests against the Israeli Wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in from their inception in 2005. The following is a selection with personal stories marking 10 years of their work in the village. The village of Bil'in will mark a decade of nonviolent protests and popular struggle on Friday, February 27, 2015. By Keren Manor The first time I came to Bil'in was in 2005, with the Anarchists Against The Wall group. It was also my first time in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and one of the events that completely changed my…

About +972 Magazine

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.